Kanye is out (UPDATE: Kanye is in again)

[Andrew]

I’m going to guess that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have spent a grand total of zero seconds worrying about Kanye West‘s candidacy.

[Corbyn is (no longer) the leader of the Labour Party]

Kanye running feels like it would belong in the meme-friendly world of 2016; not in the hellscape of 2020.

[South Dakota Democrat]

Is this going to hurt Biden?

I should think so. The deadline may have passed in Florida but there's still plenty of time for him to get on the ballot in Arizona and Wisconsin, in which case it's game over for Uncle Joe.

Why would an additional candidate who was openly a Trump supporter and whose platform is based upon being anti-abortion and anti-gay draw hurt Biden?

Because people here have a racist view of things and assume Kanye will get a large enough section of the black vote that it will hurt Biden.

Or because a lot of Biden's supporters aren't too keen on the guy, just want to beat Trump and might be willing to vote for Kanye West if he could convince enough people his candidacy was viable.

More importantly, because Trump is closer to his absolute floor right now than Biden is. That means it's easier (in theory) for a semi-credible third party to poach Democratic votes than Republican ones.

In what universe is Kanye semi-credible?

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

Electoral College Dropout
Late Nomination
Inauguration
808s and Tax Breaks
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Presidency
Preezus
The Life of POTUS
Kids See Votes

Watch the vote
Ye shall vote
Kanye is king
Ye's country

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Is this going to hurt Biden?

I should think so. The deadline may have passed in Florida but there's still plenty of time for him to get on the ballot in Arizona and Wisconsin, in which case it's game over for Uncle Joe.

Why would an additional candidate who was openly a Trump supporter and whose platform is based upon being anti-abortion and anti-gay draw hurt Biden?

Because people here have a racist view of things and assume Kanye will get a large enough section of the black vote that it will hurt Biden.

Or because a lot of Biden's supporters aren't too keen on the guy, just want to beat Trump and might be willing to vote for Kanye West if he could convince enough people his candidacy was viable.

More importantly, because Trump is closer to his absolute floor right now than Biden is. That means it's easier (in theory) for a semi-credible third party to poach Democratic votes than Republican ones.

On the flip side of this, this is why the fact that a lot of people voting Against Trump rather than For Biden is important--it means they're less likely to flip if they find somebody else to vote for, as defeating Trump is a priority rather than having a like-minded candidate.

Agreed. If (and it's a big if) West can get more than 1% in polls or a few friendly/feverish media cycles (I wouldn't be surprised if the latter happened), the Biden campaign may have to devote a lot of energy to reminding everyone that his candidacy isn't a viable path to Beating Trump^TM.

We're talking about a guy who almost certainly won't be on the ballot in enough states to get 270 electoral votes. And who's running on a right-wing platform. I don't think the Biden campaign will spend much energy on him or have to to convince voters he's not serious.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Instead of meming and concern trolling, maybe we should take an objective look at Kanye's chances for ballot access in Arizona.

As noted, Arizona requires 39,039 signatures for independent candidates by September 3. I reiterate, these signatures must come from registered independents, any from Democrats or Republicans will not count. Arizona's official count is that 31.8% of voters are registered as "Other", aka independent.

So how to collect these signatures? The best places are usually on busy street corners in downtown or events like states and county fairs. Which aren't happening and neither are busy street corners. But if they did, on average 31.8% of voters would be eligible to sign it (mind you this is voters, not people, and Arizona is a state with low voter registration numbers), so for every 25 voters you talk to, 8 are eligible to sign (rounding up.) How many will? If we got with the generous assumption of a quarter of indies being willing to, that means 2 signatures for every 25 voters talked to, aka 8% of those talked to. 39039/0.08 = 487,987.5 So aka almost half a million people. Hell lets bet generous and just round down to 480,000. Kanye's "campaign" has 50 days to collect these signatures. So 480,000/50 = 9600 people talked to a day. Let's assume your average volunteer can actually reach 25 voters per shift, the number we worked with before. That's....384 shifts a day.

You could argue you get a better rate with targeted door knocking to only indies, but anyone's who's done door knocking knows you get at most a 10% response rate and while more people might be home now, people who are working at home won't be happy or eager to sign a Kanye West petition, and probably not people panicking about their future who lost their jobs. Furthermore Arizona has a lot of people with language barriers or are in senior centers with limited access. But even then assuming a 10% response rate, and that all registered independents reached are still in their listed addresses, and the same 25% willing to sign the petition, means that 39039/0.25 = 156,156 voters must be contacted. With a 10% response rate that means 1,561,560 doors knocked. In an Arizona summers. That's 31,231 doors knocked a day. Even rounding that down to 30,000 means 1000 volunteer shifts a day needed if each volunteer is actually willing to knock 30 doors and not accounting for people who don't show up or get sick of it a few doors in and just go home.

Of course both of those numbers are based on getting the signatures on their own, but assuming 50/50 to get them that would still require 192 people per day trying to collect sigs in public and 500 for door knocking. And these numbers are based on normal response rates, not rates during a pandemic in a summer in Arizona heat or the other issues in Arizona mentioned that make it more difficult. And it's not even accounting for the volunteer hours needed for the overhead work and organizing. So I ask all of you: how feasible do you think this is?

So...anyone willing to actually take a stab and try to debunk the math here or are we going to just keep meming and pissing our pants?

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

So I ask all of you: how feasible do you think this is?

In short: it isn't. The manpower required to get the signatures alone would be tricky and it would take a minimum of two weeks just acquire office space, staff up, and conduct trainings. After that, you need to actually pay everyone. In Arizona, that's going to cost about $7 million. Not impossible for Kanye+Elon but I'm skeptical they'd put down at least $100 million nationwide to really get this done. And this assumes there are voters actually willing to sign these petitions. I would tentatively assume that most states have a higher number of signatures required to get on the ballot than voters who would actually sign this petition.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So I ask all of you: how feasible do you think this is?

In short: it isn't. The manpower required to get the signatures alone would be tricky and it would take a minimum of two weeks just acquire office space, staff up, and conduct trainings. After that, you need to actually pay everyone. In Arizona, that's going to cost about $7 million. Not impossible for Kanye+Elon but I'm skeptical they'd put down at least $100 million nationwide to really get this done. And this assumes there are voters actually willing to sign these petitions. I would tentatively assume that most states have a higher number of signatures required to get on the ballot than voters who would actually sign this petition.

Indeed. So in conclusion this post, amongst others, is full of sh!t:

Is this going to hurt Biden?

I should think so. The deadline may have passed in Florida but there's still plenty of time for him to get on the ballot in Arizona and Wisconsin, in which case it's game over for Uncle Joe.

[Minnesota Mike]

Kanye is on the Ballot in Oklahoma.

http://ballot-access.org/

This is the first year in which it has been possible for an independent presidential candidate to get on the Oklahoma ballot without a petition. Instead they can qualify with a $35,000 filing fee. On July 15, the deadline, three independent presidential candidates paid their fee and submitted a list of presidential elector candidates. They are Brock Pierce, Kanye West, and Jade Simmons.

[Tender Branson]

Kanye is on the Ballot in Oklahoma.

http://ballot-access.org/

This is the first year in which it has been possible for an independent presidential candidate to get on the Oklahoma ballot without a petition. Instead they can qualify with a $35,000 filing fee. On July 15, the deadline, three independent presidential candidates paid their fee and submitted a list of presidential elector candidates. They are Brock Pierce, Kanye West, and Jade Simmons.

So, I would assume that he failed to get on the FL and SC ballots ?

Their deadlines were also yesterday.

[Yoda]

Is this going to hurt Biden?

I should think so. The deadline may have passed in Florida but there's still plenty of time for him to get on the ballot in Arizona and Wisconsin, in which case it's game over for Uncle Joe.

Why would an additional candidate who was openly a Trump supporter and whose platform is based upon being anti-abortion and anti-gay draw hurt Biden?

Because people here have a racist view of things and assume Kanye will get a large enough section of the black vote that it will hurt Biden.

Or because a lot of Biden's supporters aren't too keen on the guy, just want to beat Trump and might be willing to vote for Kanye West if he could convince enough people his candidacy was viable.

There aren't enough facepalm emojis in cyberspace for this sentence.

[Yoda]

18 pages for someone's manic episode

Yeh...one of the lower points in the history of Atlas discourse I'm hoping.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

In addition, let's look at the requirements for other states: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates

There are only two other states Kanye can get ballot access on just paying a fee: Louisiana and Vermont. (Technically Colorado too but the FEC filing deadline there has passed.) Neither is a swing state or large. Looking at the largest states he's already failed in Texas and Florida. New York requires 30k signatures by 7/30. California almost 200k 8/7. As noted above, it would probably take until the end of July for Kanye to even rent campaign office space and get the infrastructure set up to start collecting sigs. So that means he's unlikely to be on the ballot on any of the four most populated states. Also Michigan's deadline is today. And Pennsylvania was covered here.

As for easy states, Tennessee only requires 275 signatures. New Jersey does only 800, but also has a filing deadline of 7/27. Wisconsin's 2000 signatures by 8/4 doesn't seem too absurd, but that's over 100 signatures a day for a campaign that only exists on paper so far. He needs to act fast. There's a handful of states that only require 1000, but the largest of these is Washington, and the only ones with a deadline of less than a month away are Idaho, Mississippi, Rhode Island and Utah. So basically assuming he actually puts effort into this, Tennessee is still the largest state Kanye can feasibly expect ballot access in. Furthermore no states he easily could are swing states. The easiest might be Iowa with 1500 signatures required in about a month, but even that's a pretty heavy lift for a campaign that hasn't established infrastructure at all yet.

Now...is such a campaign in such few states going to be included in polls or be treated by the media as a viable alternative to Biden and Trump?

[morgankingsley]

So is Oklahoma the only state he is confirmed for the ballot?

Could he also be feasible as write on for previous states that he failed at? That's a actual question

[W]

An open letter to all my esteemed gentlemen from the southward areas of town who regard me closely,

It is still my utmost belief that Ms. Swift & I will still engage in intercourse. After all, I am responsible for her global notoriety.

[Horus]

In addition, let's look at the requirements for other states: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates

There are only two other states Kanye can get ballot access on just paying a fee: Louisiana and Vermont. (Technically Colorado too but the FEC filing deadline there has passed.) Neither is a swing state or large. Looking at the largest states he's already failed in Texas and Florida. New York requires 30k signatures by 7/30. California almost 200k 8/7. As noted above, it would probably take until the end of July for Kanye to even rent campaign office space and get the infrastructure set up to start collecting sigs. So that means he's unlikely to be on the ballot on any of the four most populated states. Also Michigan's deadline is today. And Pennsylvania was covered here.

As for easy states, Tennessee only requires 275 signatures. New Jersey does only 800, but also has a filing deadline of 7/27. Wisconsin's 2000 signatures by 8/4 doesn't seem too absurd, but that's over 100 signatures a day for a campaign that only exists on paper so far. He needs to act fast. There's a handful of states that only require 1000, but the largest of these is Washington, and the only ones with a deadline of less than a month away are Idaho, Mississippi, Rhode Island and Utah. So basically assuming he actually puts effort into this, Tennessee is still the largest state Kanye can feasibly expect ballot access in. Furthermore no states he easily could are swing states. The easiest might be Iowa with 1500 signatures required in about a month, but even that's a pretty heavy lift for a campaign that hasn't established infrastructure at all yet.

Now...is such a campaign in such few states going to be included in polls or be treated by the media as a viable alternative to Biden and Trump?

Yes. Our media has no shame.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Is this going to hurt Biden?

I should think so. The deadline may have passed in Florida but there's still plenty of time for him to get on the ballot in Arizona and Wisconsin, in which case it's game over for Uncle Joe.

Why would an additional candidate who was openly a Trump supporter and whose platform is based upon being anti-abortion and anti-gay draw hurt Biden?

Because people here have a racist view of things and assume Kanye will get a large enough section of the black vote that it will hurt Biden.

Or because a lot of Biden's supporters aren't too keen on the guy, just want to beat Trump and might be willing to vote for Kanye West if he could convince enough people his candidacy was viable.

There aren't enough facepalm emojis in cyberspace for this sentence.

It would not necessarily have to be especially close to the truth to be convincing for a lot of people.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

In addition, let's look at the requirements for other states: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates

There are only two other states Kanye can get ballot access on just paying a fee: Louisiana and Vermont. (Technically Colorado too but the FEC filing deadline there has passed.) Neither is a swing state or large. Looking at the largest states he's already failed in Texas and Florida. New York requires 30k signatures by 7/30. California almost 200k 8/7. As noted above, it would probably take until the end of July for Kanye to even rent campaign office space and get the infrastructure set up to start collecting sigs. So that means he's unlikely to be on the ballot on any of the four most populated states. Also Michigan's deadline is today. And Pennsylvania was covered here.

As for easy states, Tennessee only requires 275 signatures. New Jersey does only 800, but also has a filing deadline of 7/27. Wisconsin's 2000 signatures by 8/4 doesn't seem too absurd, but that's over 100 signatures a day for a campaign that only exists on paper so far. He needs to act fast. There's a handful of states that only require 1000, but the largest of these is Washington, and the only ones with a deadline of less than a month away are Idaho, Mississippi, Rhode Island and Utah. So basically assuming he actually puts effort into this, Tennessee is still the largest state Kanye can feasibly expect ballot access in. Furthermore no states he easily could are swing states. The easiest might be Iowa with 1500 signatures required in about a month, but even that's a pretty heavy lift for a campaign that hasn't established infrastructure at all yet.

Now...is such a campaign in such few states going to be included in polls or be treated by the media as a viable alternative to Biden and Trump?

Yes. Our media has no shame.

Even if that is the case, how does a a campaign only on the ballot in Oklahoma, Vermont, Louisiana, Tennessee, Utah, Rhode Island, Mississippi and Idaho play spoiler in any swing states?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Is this going to hurt Biden?

I should think so. The deadline may have passed in Florida but there's still plenty of time for him to get on the ballot in Arizona and Wisconsin, in which case it's game over for Uncle Joe.

Why would an additional candidate who was openly a Trump supporter and whose platform is based upon being anti-abortion and anti-gay draw hurt Biden?

Because people here have a racist view of things and assume Kanye will get a large enough section of the black vote that it will hurt Biden.

Or because a lot of Biden's supporters aren't too keen on the guy, just want to beat Trump and might be willing to vote for Kanye West if he could convince enough people his candidacy was viable.

There aren't enough facepalm emojis in cyberspace for this sentence.

It would not necessarily have to be especially close to the truth to be convincing for a lot of people.

Even normies know that a candidate who's only on the ballot in Oklahoma and maybe a handful of other states is not viable.

[cg41386]

Jesus Christ

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

https://twitter.com/alisawiersema/status/1283847468820594688?s=19

[W]

https://twitter.com/alisawiersema/status/1283847468820594688?s=19

No way in hell his advisors even tried to muster paid campaign workers to collect 12,000 signatures in under 2 weeks.

[Dr. Arch]

And that's it for the MI deadline.

[DaleCooper]

What are the chances that Kanye West actually is "out" of the presidential race, like that source told some publications a couple days ago, and the Oklahoma ballot fee and the FEC filing were done basically out of inertia because the "campaign" was too incompetent to communicate this to everyone involved?

[zoz]

idk why people were saying he was "out." All he did was cease operations in Florida because it wasn't possible. He continued to file paperwork after Florida and now he's on Oklahoma's ballot. He's not giving up yet imo